You can use a FTSE Allshare index charging 0.25%(annually) for cpmparison. Pound cost averaging. Say £500 per month for the duration.

I love the SL GARS fund though as it conned the financial sector completely. Our default pension scheme had some investments in this and it always looked like snake oil. I have always self-invested in an Allshare tracker.

I know some Financial Advice companies had their own pension funds 100% invested in this. Persuaded by their own mis-information. A classic case of being hoisted by your own petard!

I am so sorry for the delay! i completely missed this! I just did a standard one period cumulative return. I did NOT add any costs to the FTSE Tracker.

Look where it ranks against the UK funds!! This is GBP Market Price Total Return 31/12/1999-31/12/2018. This is pretty compelling surely? Trackers are OK in the bull market but when things hit the fan i would want an active manager to see me through. All returns are net of costs of course.

Avantegarde wrote:Trackers certainly ARE the investment of choice for a 30-year timescale. They will save you (roughly) 1% of your accumulated wealth each and every year due to their low charges which, over that time, will mean you keep a vast chunk of your own wealth instead of giving it to an investment "manager" who may well do worse than the index.

According to the above rough and ready study he has an 88% chance of beating the index after costs for 18 year time horizon.

Darwin200 wrote:Thanks for that. I am genuinely interested and can diversify if required,

But all you seem to have done is divide the current value of the indices by the values in 1999. That isn't strictly relevant for PCA.

If there is an online tool that can work it out though, please let me know.

I need numbers of what the fund would be worth using the figures I provided using PCA over that time period.

I didn't just divide the indices as that would be a raw return and pretty meaningless. I returned the Price Total Return (ie. dividends re-invested at the prevailing price/index value on the ex dividend date). . So therefore, to pick a fund at random. I am saying if you invested £100 in 1999 in Lowland it would now be worth £629.03 including your initial 100 pounds. which includes the capital uplift and all dividends reinvested in this time period. I agree that pound cost averaging is more like the investor experience than a buy and hold but i maintain this is a good proxy! otherwise i have to work out how to do PCA on Morningstar and that could take a while!

Though I have a very comfortable six figure sum in my DC retirement pot, I am willing to entertain putting part of the capital into a separate fund for purely capital growth long term, so will be interested what you recommend.

I would never recommend an individual investment company. I am not qualified to do so. I was just pointing out that in most (but by no means all) of the studies i have seen actives seems to outdo passives, even including costs, and CEFs tend to outperform Open ended. As I have mentioned on here previously, I have skin in the game on CEFs which is why I would only ever provide facts and data rather than my opinion.

I do maintain that with a 20 year horizon I wouldn't be high in passives compared to actives as you are likely to see two crashes and want someone far smarter than me to guide the portfolio through it.

The logic is simple: If you are going to be a net buyer of stocks in the future, either directly with your ownmoney or indirectly (through your ownership of a company that is repurchasing shares), you are hurt when stocksrise. You benefit when stocks swoon. Emotions, however, too often complicate the matter: Most people, includingthose who will be net buyers in the future, take comfort in seeing stock prices advance. These shareholders resemblea commuter who rejoices after the price of gas increases, simply because his tank contains a day’s supply.Charlie and I don’t expect to win many of you over to our way of thinking – we’ve observed enoughhuman behavior to know the futility of that – but we do want you to be aware of our personal calculus. And herea confession is in order: In my early days I, too, rejoiced when the market rose. Then I read Chapter Eight of BenGraham’s The Intelligent Investor, the chapter dealing with how investors should view fluctuations in stockprices. Immediately the scales fell from my eyes, and low prices became my friend. Picking up that book was oneof the luckiest moments in my life.

We have compared our IT portfolios against the Vanguard life Strategy 80% fund since those funds became available. We remain in a portfolio of active IT's as they have outperformed the VLS with one exception, that is when we tend to wait too long after selling during a bad time in the markets. The reason appears to be that we are too slow in re-entering the market. However, over time it is clear that a portfolio of IT's can outperform but it does take a little work.

The reason for our checking against the VLS is quite simple, in the event of my passing then my wife will move into the VLS as she has no interest in managing the investments. That seems to be the best course of action.